John Jantunen
The body appeared in the first week of August. It was already hot that morning even though it was too early for anyone else to be about, except for maybe the boy who brought the paper. The paperboy, yes, the very reason I was out before the sun had had a chance to colour the sky in reds and orange. I wanted to stop him, yes, to catch him, so that I could have a word with him about the state that my dailies were in when they arrived. More and more they looked, well – and this was the odd thing – they looked like someone had already read them. Or really, if I wanted to get to the crux of the matter, they looked like a lot of people had read them. With their curling edges and their torn pages, their smudged ink and smears of brown that could have been coffee but could just as easily have been something else, they looked, in fact, like they’d been passed from one end of a city bus to the other with each person in between taking what they needed and discarding the rest on the seat beside them, or on the floor, where they would sit until the driver, at the end of his shift, tired and too grumpy to take any care about it, would come along and gather them up, which would go a long way to explaining why sometimes the pages were out of order, like I’d found with yesterday’s paper, pages out of order and one page out of order and in the wrong section.
So I was up early waiting for the boy to arrive and when he did?
—Be nice, dear.
That was my wife, the eternal her to my him, and it was good advice, excellent advice, just the kind of advice that I’d always relied on her for. She had sound judgment, if nothing else (and that’s not to say that she had nothing else; she had all the regular charms of the opposite sex; had all the smells, all the curves and all the softness that made my fingers dance too lightly when we were lying together, making her laugh and tell me to be more firm, always more firm). And it was her judgement, since I’d retired, that I’d retreated into, telling myself, for a start, that it was easier that way. Easier because I no longer had anywhere to hide; no more job, no more quick nips on the way home, no more ways of pretending I was listening while my mind was on other things. Now my mind was always on one thing and one thing only. But what was it? The house? No, not that. It wasn’t something as tangible as that, though I wished that it was as tangible as an old farmhouse at the end of a lane that was dirt when we moved in but was now paved right up to the driveway, the last on the road, the last, if anyone wanted to know, in the town itself, its back to a ravine and a wall of cedar hedges surrounding its front so that it was possible to believe that we were the only ones left. And if it weren’t for the odd phone call, and the even odder visit from our son, it’d be almost impossible to believe there was anyone else, but he hadn’t visited for… How long was it? Last Christmas? I’d have to ask her, she’d know. Right after I talked to the paperboy I’d ask her, ask her, I’d ask her?
First we’d have eggs and toast and we’d drink that stuff that came out of a bottle and didn’t taste like coffee but which I was supposed to pretend did. Then I’d ask her?
—Damn it, where’s that paperboy?
I hadn’t meant to say it out loud but there she was behind me, holding the paper. Its edges were curled up and I could see a rip on the first page, a rip right through the lead article, an intolerable rip that had no place severing the head of the prime minister, a man who, granted, I hadn’t voted for, but a man who still didn’t deserve his head flapping off to one side, his body clenched tightly against her fingers. Her nails yellowing, flecks of red dotting the surface, dotting the surface like, like, dotting the surface?
—I already got it. He came while you were in the bathroom.
—You saw him?
—Well no, I didn’t see him.
—Then how do you know?
—I heard it hit the door. And here it is. Now why don’t you come in. I’ve made eggs.
But I wasn’t listening. I was striding, most definitely striding, I could feel it through the soles of my slippers, I was striding through the door and down the steps, striding toward where the hedge broke at the end of the walkway, toward the road that still smelled like dirt except on rainy days when it smelled like what it was – crumbling blacktop – and my hands were swinging at my side, swinging like a man of 40, a man who had things to do, a man who didn’t wear slippers all day and sometimes a bathrobe, a man who knew people and was known, a man who knew how to get things done, a man who, when I got to the road, would most definitely not be nice, not be a dear, I’d be a man who knew, who knew, I’d be a man who?
But before I broke past the hedge and confronted the road, confronted the very likely empty road with my anger and my venom, before I blasted the road for being empty, before I let that goddamn road have it good and square, before any of that I saw the body lying at the edge of the lawn. It was partway concealed by the hedge as if, before it was a body, it’d tried to crawl under it, maybe to get out of the heat or to hide or maybe for no reason at all. Now though, with all that trying to get cool and trying to get out of sight and trying to do god-knows-what-else out of the way, it lay there, one leg and one hand resting beneath the hedge, being quite definitely a body. It was the smell that gave it away, that told me immediately that it was a body and not, say, a drunk passed out which would have made sense too since there were a lot of drunks these days (I’d read in the newspaper alarming statistics, alarming, and that was just the other morning while I was waiting for my breakfast on a day not unlike this). And being drunks they frequently passed out somewhere so why not in our yard, which was out of sight of the rest of town and might as well have been alone on the planet for all the visitors who made their way to the end of the lane, the asphalt pitted and bits of it strewn in the ditches so that it wasn’t any better than the gravel it had replaced. No, I couldn’t think of a better place for a drunk to pass out, except that it wasn’t a drunk, it was a body, and one that was old, maybe three or four days if the way it smelled was any clue. The smell, or rather the stench – a clinging, cloying, sticking-to-the-hairs-in-my-nose stink – stopped me at five paces from it, all pretence of blasting the road spent in the odour that even now (has it been five days? six? I couldn’t say) lingers, making me wipe and rub and dig about the inside of my nose with a pinkie hoping, somehow, to dislodge it so I could forget, even though now (seven days later? eight?) I’m way beyond forgetting and would be happy with just being able to smell the way I used to.
Not knowing what to do, I looked back at the house hoping she’d still be there, standing at the door, a reservoir of good advice, just waiting to splash a little my way, but the door was closed; closed against the bugs and the heat and (let’s be honest, I told myself) the scene I was about to make had the body not intervened, had the body not brought me to my senses, had the body, the body, had the body?
—There’s a body out there.
—Out where?
Standing in the kitchen now, facing her back, bent over the wood stove, making breakfast even though it was far too early to be eating, the question threw me, made me pause to consider, made me, all of a sudden, wonder if things were really as bad as all that.
Out where?
What kind of a question was that? Did it strike at the core? I thought not but then maybe it did, maybe I was wrong, maybe bodies had a habit of turning up frequently enough, with enough regularity, that their location was the most important thing, trumped all other questions, questions like, like?
—Didn’t you hear what I said? There’s a goddamn body out there.
—No need to scream.
—There’s a body?
—I heard you the first two times. Now sit down, your eggs are ready.
—But what about the body?
—I’m sure it will be fine.
—Fine, how can it be? I mean, it’s?
—Yes, dear?
—It’s a goddamn body and?
—Please keep your voice down.
—And it’s on our front yard.
—So you said.
—Well, don’t take my word for it. You can see for your goddamn self.
Setting my plate of eggs next to a large glass of water to wash them down since we were out of the other stuff – the pretend coffee – she touched my arm and smiled. I knew what that smile meant, and for a moment I felt foolish, like a child who wouldn’t take no for an answer and ended up in his room because of it. But then the anger was back and I wouldn’t sit down, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t damn well?
—What are you doing?
—I’m calling the police. What am I doing?
The phone was in my hand and my fingers were pounding on the keys. After three pounds the phone was at my ear and I was listening between rings, to the dead air between the rings, listening between the rings?
—Something wrong, dear?
—The phone’s dead.
—Probably a tree down on the line.
A tree down, sure, it all made sense. But still I stood with the phone to my ear, listening between the rings, waiting and listening, listening and waiting?
—Your eggs are getting cold.
—Blast it!
I slammed the receiver down with enough force to send a spike through my knuckles, a pain that felt like a nail driven into my fingers, sparing only the thumb, like the thumb was special, like the thumb had a plan, an idea, like the thumb was, the thumb was, like the thumb was?
And then I was back at the table staring at my plate.
—What the hell are these?
—Blueberries.
—Where’s my toast?
—We’re out of toast. Maybe tomorrow. Now eat.
Good advice, yes, excellent. I took a forkful of the scrambled-up eggs. They were dry, I could tell from the way they hung dully on my fork. Not a hint of glisten. Not a trace of shine. Would it kill her to add a little butter, I thought, and my eyes drifted to the fridge. The fridge, yes. There it was, most certainly a fridge, sitting where a fridge should sit, next to the stove and a little further on, the sink. Nothing but the floor in between to keep me from walking right over to it and getting myself some butter – a little glisten, a taste of shine – but still I sat, staring, the eggs growing cold on the plate in front of me, the smell of something dead in my nose. Something dead. A body. A dead body.
—When was the last time Chris visited?
—Chris?
—Our son, damn it. The boy.
A momentary waver. A quiver to her hand. So, I was getting somewhere. After long last. Here it was. I was on the verge of it now.
—I don’t?
—Was it a week ago?
—It’s hard?
—A month?
—I?
—Was it Christmas, for Christ’s sake? Was that when he came? Damn it, woman, speak!
—Yes. It was Christmas.
—And now the first week of August. Shameful, it’s shameful.
With new resolve I pitched my fork into the yellow cloud of eggs. I crammed them into my mouth, thinking about toast and coffee, and bacon, and not looking at the fridge, most definitely not looking?
—Where are you going?
For she was going somewhere, was at the back door, her hand turning, turning, her hand on the knob, turning?
—I’m going to feed the chickens.
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that so I harrumphed, harrumphed hard, with no regard for the eggs mashing against my teeth so that little bits flew out. There was one on my sleeve so I flicked at it. It made the most unbelievable sound as it hit the floor – a clattering – so out of place for a fleck of eggs, not at all like an egg should sound, especially a fleck so small, and then it occurred to me that it must have been the door and not the egg at all. Which made sense. Sure, in a world such as this?
At the window over the sink: The plate was in my hand, worried maybe about something in the sink so it clung to my fingers, trying to act all casual so my hand wouldn’t notice it still hanging there, the same way my hand was trying to avoid my eyes because my eyes were onto something, on the verge, distinctly and definitely on the verge of the thing. And my hands wanted no part of it, my hands had enough to worry about. My hands were already thinking about the paper sitting on the table. Thumbing through it, thumbing, yes thumbing, all the way through, a test of their mettle and merit, a true test of their moxie, and me along for the?
—They burnt down the Parliament Building. The prime minister set the first torch, it says. He said we’re on our own now. Say, what happened to you?
She was at the sink. Dirt covered in dirt. Hands, I could see, like they’d been dipped in it, her hair wild like straw, and a smell, something familiar, a smell I couldn’t place but even now (nine, 10 days later) I can’t get rid of. Most definitely the smell of something, of something, the smell of… something.